Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Welcome, good folk, to the 14th Carnival of Radical Feminists! I am very honored to be your host for this month's excellent spread of feminist thought. I've selected a bumper crop of 28 submissions for your perusal -- one for each day of our lunar cycle. I earnestly hope you will use this opportunity to not just read some choice posts, but to also discover new blogs, add them to your links and blogroll, and continue to grow our community in all its diversity. It's been a tremendous experience this month. Pass it on! -- Maggie Jochild

[Note: All images/graphics are credited at the end, and may be enlarged for easier viewing by clicking on them.]

Favorite lines: "The next time somebody tries to tell you that men have to deal with just as many unhealthy stereotypes about their appearances as women do . . . just walk them over to the magazine aisle."

Favorite lines: "...Because men deserve to have the last word when it comes to what women do with their bodies, right? Because you know, they know so much more about the bodies of women than actual women; I get it now."

Favorite lines: "With their booklet of dance moves, a garter and 100 peekaboo dance dollars to reenact the real thing" and "I thought it was a joke, but sadly, I was mistaken."

Also from Holly at Menstrual Poetry, her essay Anti-Choice Oklahoma reports on Oklahoma's recently passed SB 1878 which, as Holly puts it, "takes all of the previously brought up anti-choice laws and combines them into one."

Favorite line: "It may just be me, but if you are not able to you know, do your job, because of your religious beliefs and moral convictions, shouldn’t you find another line of work?"

[Note: Holly is a prolific blogger and has more terrific posts than could all be included in this particular Carnival. You should definitely add her to your daily check-in list.]

Favorite lines: "Keep in mind what most porn users would have you believe is the primary purpose of pornography, i.e. to 'get off' as one so-called 'feminist' once told me. (How on earth did people 'get off' before the existence of porn? She couldn’t answer that one…)"

Favorite lines: "Linking all these three stories or narratives is the central one wherein male sexual/physical violence against women and girls is part of what is supposedly normal and innate masculine behaviour. Women and girls are, however, held to a far higher and different standard wherein any deviation from their supposed ‘feminine role’ is reported as innate deviancy and madness."

'Don't look so worried.I'm just going to exercise my freedom of speech.'

From Nine Deuce at Rage Against The Man-chine, her essay The First Amendment is only sort of cool explores the contradictory logic of using a free speech defense or "community interest" argument to defend pornography which clearly does damage. [Particularly relevant right now with the mass frenzy over Grand Theft Auto II, which rewards "players" for the rape and murder of prostitutes.]

Favorite lines: "...As rapacious and lascivious as some of the patriarchs who founded this here nation were, I’m pretty sure none of them intended that the very first amendment they added to the republic’s founding sheet of parchment would be used as a pretext for defending the 'right' of motherfuckers with morals lower than whale shit in the Marianas Trench to create videos simulating the gang rape and sexualized murder of women, and the simulated rape of children."

Also from Nine Deuce at Rage Against The Man-chine, her essay Porn Part 4: Half of the Big Picture continues her extraordinarily cogent, plain-speaking, and often hilarious series about pornography. (Parts 1 through 6 are available at her blog, and they are drawing links and praise from all over the blogosphere.)

Favorite lines: "There’s no other object that is both desired and hated in the way women in porn are."and"Men are just as affected by our bizarre cultural expectations and prescriptions for female sexuality as women are."and"I’m a liberal. I don’t want to ban anything, I just want to inform consumers about the impact of their choices, which is the only real way to effect change, in my view."

From Kate/Cruella at Cruella-Blog, her essay Trouble in Comedy-Land reports on a recent incident in the UK where a female audience member was persuaded onstage by a male "comedian" and sexually molested as part of his "routine", with no intervention from anyone watching.

Favorite lines: "Why is anyone asking what the boundaries of comedy are? Yes, it's ok for comics to say offensive things - that's because we all have freedom of speech...Personally I think we shouldn't reward comics who make sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic or ableist jokes, and in some cases there may be a case to be made against them for inciting hatred or crime, but that's a totally separate issue. None of us, including comedians, have the right to rape or sexually assault."

From Heart at Women's Space, her essay May Day: A Tribute to Lucy Parsons honors "this woman of color and a working-class revolutionary" who "spent her life struggling for the rights of the poor, unemployed, homeless, women, children, and minority groups, and for a future society based on free association of labor organizations."

Favorite lines: "We [women] are the slaves of slaves. We are exploited more ruthlessly than men...We [say] that the land shall belong to the landless, the tools to the toiler, and the products to the producers."

Also from Heart at Women's Space, her essay Rev. Jeremiah Wright for President offers an antidote to the unjustified media free-for-all at the expense of the better thinking coming from Jeremiah Wright and Black Liberation Theology. (This created a long, thoughtful discussion in Comments.)

Favorite line: "...White people and nonblack people have absolutely no idea of the role of the black church and black pastors in the journey towards liberation for all people in this country, not only black people, but all women and all human beings of good will and good faith."

From Natasha at Homo Academicus, her essay Pick Your Battles uses the struggle she went through to legally change her last name to a shared one with her partner as a very useful primer for discussing the role and value of allies.

Favorite lines: "I’m not being oversensitive, I’m not too emotionally involved in the situation to judge whether or not I’m being treated unfairly. I don’t need an straight person to act as an 'impartial' observer to judge whether or not I’m rationally assessing the situation."and"I live these battles moment-by-moment, day-by-day. I don’t have the energy to devote to combating it all, because I am more than just a homo, I am a person with a life."

From Pisaquari at Buried Alive (submitted by Amy's Brain Today, thanks), the essay Hot For Tots (Sexual Stigma, p.1) addresses the issue of child porn, offering an explanation as to why it is not simply out there but on the rise when "Being anti child porn is sorta like the ultimate DUH, isn’t it? Duh! Who the fuck says they are down with child porn? And yet, our country/world can’t keep its creepy hands off of them. So what’s the dealiyo?"

Favorite lines: "How, pray tell, is a person (a child no less!) to be sexualized without someone being the one to sexualize her. Excuse my agenda for a second, but these pictures would not be sexy or sexual if women’s bodies were not appropriated. Period! They are sexual because of conditioning, not innateness, so that actually makes it the sexualizer’s fault–not Miley’s."

Also from Amy's Brain Today at Feminist Reprise :: The Blog, her essay A Few Thoughts on Appropriation sheds some succinct light on why crediting sources (ALL sources) has been a feminist ethical standard for decades, and why sidestepping this practice is glove-in-hand with race, gender and class oppression.

Favorite lines: "What’s the goal? Pursuing patriarchal white supremacist ideas about success–being the lone explorer/savior, the authority, shedding brilliance and enlightenment? Or being part of something bigger, part of a network or a movement of people who want a different world and are working on building it in lots of different ways?"

Also from Amy's Brain Today at Feminist Reprise: The Blog, in her essay The first periodic FR awards for boneheadedness begins a "best of" idiocy selection that I hope she continues. This post's focus gave top "prize" to the Tulsa judge who ruled a 16-year-old girl could not protest a man photographing under her skirt without her consent at a Target store because "…[t]he person photographed was not in a place where she had a reasonable expectation of privacy", and also took on the illogic of lesbians who travel to marry in another state because they cannot get married in their own then complaining that they cannot get divorced in their own state, either.

Favorite lines: "ALL YR BODEEZ, THEY ARE BELONG TO US" and"Haven’t the heterosexuals given us plenty of evidence for the unreliability of conjugal bliss?"

From Renee at Womanist Musings, she describes her essay Is Planned Parenthood Racist? with "Planned parenthood has recently come under attack for the number of abortions obtained by WOC. In this post I attempt to explain why this is not a racist issue. I further go into the fact that this is just an attempt to reduce women's access to abortion."

Favorite lines: "These pro-life protesters all refuse to deal with the real issues behind why the rate of abortion is so high for African American women. Blacks are subject to systemic racism, high rates of poverty and high rates of imprisonment...Nowhere do I see these ministers advocating for things like socialized health care, education, daycare and flexible working hours for mothers...Instead they are focusing on birth which is a false starting point, as parenthood is a lifelong occupation. Race in this case is being used as a mechanism of control, to instill fear in the black population."

[NOTE: Womanist Musings has a wealth of extremely well-written, well-researched, and thought-provoking posts published. Another essay of hers was not submitted for this Carnival but I still want to promote it here: The Doll Test: White = Good And Black = Bad concerns a follow-up to the "doll test" devised in 1940 by Kenneth and Mamie Clark to examine how black children were impacted by segregation. The video accompanying this illuminating essay reveals how "Black children have internalized the self-hatred that has been promoted by our social institutions." Racist conditioning destroys any hope of liberation for us. Please share this post out there.]

From Jessica Valenti at Feministing (submitted by Natasha Fairweather, thanks, Natasha), her post College student sexually assaulted while crowd cheers tells the story of a woman who was twice sexually assaulted on the University of Connecticut campus, the second time by male onlookers as punishment for her successfully fighting back against the first assault. [Note: There is a TRIGGER WARNING at the top of this story.]

Favorite lines: "What's truly incredible about this story is how it really dismantles the idea that teaching women to protect themselves (via self-defense, specifically) is truly effective...This isn't to say that I think women shouldn't learn self-defense or fight back against assault - on the contrary, I think they should if that's what's best for them. But it's not an answer to rape culture (in which a crowd of people can stand and fucking cheer as a woman is being assaulted) - and that's what we need to be fighting back against."

From kat at BitchCraft, her essay housework, gender, being a "wife" reports on two recent articles about the inequity in housework allocation between genders and links it to Judy Syfer's classic 1970 essay "Why I Want A Wife". [Note: In the interest of disclosure, my blog recently reprinted Judy Syfers essay as part of my weekly Feminism Unadulterated series, which is where kat read it.]

Favorite lines (from the Update to the original post): "Since this posted the first time, there has been a lot of publicity from the passing of laws making it easier for husbands to take the wife's last name, and 'allowing' new parents to give their kids the mother's name....While that's encouraging, it does hammer home the point that marriage is completely patriarchal. These laws try to make it seem less so, and may placate the 'I'm a progressive, but I'm still going to buy into all the bullshit' set (you know, the ones with diamonds on their fingers and babies in yuppie-strollers who are stay at home moms and claim that they chose that in a totally un-pressured way), but I don't buy it."

From Rebecca Mott at RMott62, her essay Just Don't Want to Know speaks out, with the experience and knowledge of a former prostitute, against the "Men’s Demand for Prostitution in Scotland”.

Also from Rebecca Mott at RMott62, her essay Justify This responds to the media portrayal of male sexual violence as "one-off" instances, and affirms instead the reality of how the threat of male sexual violence imprisons women and children around the world.

Favorite lines: "The thing that makes me very angry, is when men justify their use of prostituted women and girls by saying that it prevents rape. Christ. That is saying that they are rapists, but it does not matter."and"But for the men buying women is 'adventurous'. They choose to believe that prostituted women and girls are not like other women."

[We must ALL guard against that delusion, Rebecca. Thank you so much for writing personally. I want you to know, I heard you.]

Favorite lines: "In her speech, Clinton said our democracy was 'stained by the original sin' of patriarchy. She noted that it took many years before men granted women the right to their own wages, let them make decisions about their own bodies, enter into contracts without the permission of a male relative, etc. Although the Declaration of Independence declared 'all men were created equal,' the Constitution was later amended to specify men by gender. Men never went to war over women’s rights. Instead, women and men have waged what may be the largest and longest peaceful movement in history, even though women continue to face daily violence from men."

Favorite lines: "I’m not a Bible-fearing woman. In fact, I fear people who fear the Bible. They’re the ones pushing this amendment to make sure that same-sex marriage becomes even more illegal that it already is. If they want to protect marriage, why stop there? Why not outlaw adultery, for example? Unlike same-sex marriage, the Bible has plenty to say against adultery. Even one of the commandments forbids it."

Also from Suzie at Echidne of the Snakes, her essay Dividing feminists takes on an article by editor Betsy Reed in the "We Hate Hillary" issue of The Nation and demolishes her so-called logic, point by point.

Favorite lines: "No. 1, division doesn’t seem to be Reed’s real point. She wouldn’t want feminists to unite behind Clinton; she wants them to support Obama. Wanting everyone to support your candidate is not the same as disliking discord. Using her logic, couldn’t someone say Obama divided feminists because he appeals to some and not others? No. 2, you can’t have a rift unless you had unity before. Anyone who thinks the feminist movement ever marched in lock step needs to read some history."

Favorite lines: "Any erring must be on the side of protecting those around us...Rationalization is the tool which makes unethical and illegal actions into nothing more than providing comfort."

From Dissenter at Mermaid's Garden (submitted by allecto, thanks), her essay Coping Strategies as Opposed to Feminism explores coping strategies used by women to provide "(an appearance of) escape from real life, but often, unless watched with a critical eye, they can be trapping women deeper within the patriarchal mire."

Favorite lines: "The patriarchal mainstream (malestream) is not feminist. It is very hostile to feminism, and it’s therefore not about to go around praising and promoting texts that show it up for what it is. It’s going to bury them and their creators (the real feminist women) in absolute obscurity."

[Note: I want to take this opportunity to plug the other radical feminist blog where allecto posts, Gorgon Poisons.]

From Sue Katz at Sue Katz: Consenting Adult, her rant Let's Take A Knife To Mommy takes on the recent publication of a children's book aimed at promoting plastic surgery to little girls. (I won't print the title here, there's been enough publicity for this atrocity.)Favorite lines: "The failures of our feminist vision seem to be right up in our faces of late – from these wretched wars and occupations to the mortifying bouffant hairdo’s that network newswomen seem expected to wear."and"Seventies feminists tried to build a movement and a consciousness that would endure through the generations, but the forces of profit are so strong that they require each generation to build its own defenses."

And, right at the deadline, one more entry from Holly at Menstrual Poetry is too good to hold over until next month. Her essay The Anti-Choice Agenda Gets Even More Ridiculous exposes the true agenda emerging from the anti-choice movement, which is to stop all forms of birth control. (See the post above from Amy's Brain Today with its comment ALL YR BODEEZ, THEY ARE BELONG TO US.)

Favorite lines: "I plan on driving to my local Planned Parenthood on June 7 and seeing what the protest looks like there (even though the closest Planned Parenthood to me that I can even call local is about 40 miles away) and see if they’re really pushing the peaceful concept; I’m thinking no… I also plan on taking pictures and seeing how many of these people are willing to talk to me; could be a damn good time indeed." You GO, Holly.

Our next Carnival will be hosted by Stacy at Rage Against the Man-Chine on Wednesday, June 18. Deadline for submissions is Wednesday, June 11th. Submit your blog article to the 15th edition of Carnival of Radical Feminists using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page. Thanks, as ever, to Heart for beginning this Carnival and keeping it organized!

---------------------------Credit for graphics used in this post, in order used:

Freedom of Speech dinosaur cartoon is from the magnificent site They Thought We Were Extinct by Phemisaurus Terribilis, whose devastatingly funny feminist concoctions have won mention at past Carnivals of Radical Feminists. I check them regularly for entertainment.

Republican lap dancer graphic is from an unknown source -- I just pulled it off the web somewhere.

The girl wanting to join her mother in revolution graphic is also from an unknown source.

Thanks for your hard work Maggie. One thing though, can you change the post from Buried Alive, which is credited to me? It's actually by Pisaquari, whose blog that is. I just submitted the post because I thought it was awesome.

Gosh Maggie, you did a great job pulling this together. What a lot of work it must have been.

So far I've only read the article about airbrushed magazine covers, but that was great.

Even though I photoshop my self portraits - yes, I'm that vain - I'm still in shock that photographers, art editors and retouch specialists retouch the life out of every woman in the public eye.

It's like a cultural addiction. The more botox, surgery and photoshopping we see, the more we have to do it to look "normal" and then to look super-normal celebrities have to go - or be taken - to another level. With never ending recursive feedback loops like this, who knows what women will look like in the next few years.

there's one ad on tv now, for mineral powder makeup (ok, I wear it, but a different brand) that has a baby all photoshopped and made up to look smooth. Yes, an infant. It's sick, I tell you. How could anyone want a baby to look smoother? By definition, they are the epitome of smoothness.

Thanks, Liza and everyone else. Yes, it DID take a great deal of work to create this presentation. It's occupied much of my creative energy for the past two weeks. I was reading the submissions as they came in, which gave me time to sit with each article and set of ideas. I had a basic template I created in a blank document for the format, and a day or two after I read each piece, I'd think about it, what stood out about it, and from that would come the "favorite lines" and, eventually, what kind of image I thought would bolster it.

I have an enormous set of image files that I constantly add to for use on my own blog. I think visual supplementation to good text make a profound difference in the readability of a blog, and there's just too many good artists out there to be using crappy clip-art or commercialized pap. Especially for radical text. So I had images at hand when it came time to look for a graphic match.

However, both the selection of the "favorite lines" and the images took editing one step further than simply choosing which pieces to include in the Carnival. I've done a lot of editing and critiquing of other people's writing over the decades -- I was one of the poetry editors for Common Lives/Lesbian Lives in the early 1980s, for example. To do it well requires more than confidence and expertise with language. It requires love.

Those of you who know me know I often quote Che: "At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that a true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love."

I realized this process was similar to assembling a women's journal back in the 70's, something that would get printed in small quantities on offset presses and mailed out across the country (or perhaps internationally) but whose impact and durability would be unmeasurable. The means of publication now are exponentially easier and reach any place where governmental interference plus economic deprivation have not closed the cyber door. And once it's on the web, darlings, it's there forever.

It was profoundly exciting and moving to be a part of this distribution. I was reading GREAT stuff, and I got to be the one to shine a brighter light on it. All the hours and attention to detail became joyous as a result. (Yes, even the pieces putting forth ideas with which I don't agree. I'm too old to believe I have all the answers any more.)

So, honestly, it was my honor. My chance to grow and learn. This Carnival is a brilliant, vibrant entity, glory be to Heart. And I encourage any of you who want to feel a deeper level of participation, sign up to host. Set aside the time to do it the way you'd like to see it done. As Liza's ex sang to us eons ago, "Woman's love makes the world go round." Experience the spin for yourself.

P.S. Kat, or anyone else gifted in languages: Can you give me/us a precise translation of the "Obriu el ulls" billboard graffiti?

This was a great carnival. Thank you for choosing two of my posts and for your compliments on womanist-musings. For me blogging is all about truth telling and to have that validated is good for the soul.

Maggie, I, too, love putting these carnivals together. I have never quite got over the end of my magazine editing/publishing years, I miss them dearly, and this Carnival and my blog, too, but especially the Carnival, help to scratch that writing/editing/publishing itch that runs so deep in me.

Thanks again for this great work and your kind words and all my love to all my radfem amazing brilliant hardworking indefatigable sisters here (and everywhere!).

I recently discovered this blog, and i wish to say, there are some of us feminized men out there who know our proper place in society and that is following the women leaders...it's time for the women to stand up and lead us men around by our ears...so push the movement forward...

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WISH LIST

THINGS I NEED:Emergency gasoline- or propane-powered generator of 2500 watts or better

THINGS I WANT:Books: Roads to Quoz: An American Mosey by William Least Heat Moon; The Round House by Louise Erdrich; Some Assembly Required by Annie and Sam Lamott; Silk Parachute by John McPheeFruit, cheese, and/or nutsNon-acidic file storage boxes1 small container treacleDecent working vacuum cleaner (have an electric broom, need heavier duty)Birdseed that attracts cardinals, jays, buntings, juncos, nuthatches and woodpeckersDVD with "An American in Paris"Cat food: W/D feline kibbleStrawberry potTurntable that converts vinyl to MP3s

ITEMS REMOVED FROM LIST:

"Singing In The Rain" and "Wizard of Oz" [gifted to me by Tammi Castillo]A Simple Revolution by Judy Grahn [gifted to me by Kitty Barber]

"Flight Behavior" by Barbara Kingsolver [gifted to me from Pam I.!!]1 year donation to Heifer International for either chickens or a goat to an African farm woman [gifted to me from Win Farrell and Sheldon Linseth!!]1 year sub to Netflix [gifted to me from Liza Cowan!!]

ONLINE FREE DONATION LINKS

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Go to the above site and click (no cost to you) to help provide free mammograms for women who cannot afford them. At this site are tabs which will also allow you to Click to Give food for the hungry, free child healthcare, books to spread literacy, rainforest habitat protection, and food/care for animal rescue. Easy do-gooding!

BACKGROUND INFORMATION FOR GINNY BATES

For background information on the characters and a basic summary of Ginny Bates, read this. For past chapters, go down this column to Labels, find Ginny Bates and follow the numbers in brackets after each label to read the chapter in more or less chronological order.

To see a floorplan of their house, go to the post Setting Up House. For a "genealogy" of the main characters, look at this graphic. To see the map of "their" Seattle, click on this. For a floorplan of their beach house near Galveston, check here. For the floorplan of their second house, after 2013, look here.

Why This Blog?

In the mid 1980's, I began creating a periodic newsletter for a close circle of friends, sharing information and thoughts -- like a holiday letter, only several times a year. I consumed a great deal of press-on typeface, Dover uncopyrighted graphics, and offset printing services. Sometimes I miss those days, the hands-on tangibility of it all. Two of those newsletters became infamous: The one where I was taken in by the "Alien Autopsy" fake documentary on Fox and wrote everybody about how this had to be exposed (listen, it was a difficult year for me) and the one where I sent everybody a color Xerox of the polyp photographed within my uterus.

My friend AJ brought me into the cyberworld, and eventually my newsletters became select group e-mails, named Maggie's Watershed. But now it's time to make use of even more expanded technology (and thanks to Liza Cowan for the nudge). This format will allow you to link easily to sites and sights I'm recommending, and will also give you the chance to comment. Ya'll come back now, heah?